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TV conclusions
Quick TV roundup: the ending of "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" didn't live up to the promise of the other episodes, alas. The solution to the case was just far *too* convoluted (and having a rose-tinted flashback of the murdered girl planning to run away with her teenaged sweetheart didn't work for me when we had already learned that she was a blackmailer who had been having an affair with her married teacher and had been pushing date-rape drugs around the neighbourhood; I'm sorry, but I'd have found it more credible to learn that she had faked her own death and fled abroad with her Unidentified Older Man. She had forfeited my sympathy by this point).
And as I suspected they did try to pair off Pip and Ravi in the final reel, and as it turned out it didn't work for me at all. I don't know if the result was any less toe-curling in the original novel (or if it didn't take place at all in the original novel, and was just the producers trying to tie off loose ends!), but Pip simply does not come across as emotionally adult enough to start nursing a romantic interest in anyone, and the enormous height difference between the two characters doesn't help either. The dynamic between them is big brother/younger sister, which makes kissing both unconvincing and unattractive :-(
On the other hand "Piglets" was pretty successful despite my having missed most of the start, although if this week's episode was really the final one it seemed a bit inconclusive. (None of the plot strands were really cleared up except the one about who was going to be the new Chief Superintendent, which was neatly resolved by bringing the old one back over the head of both warring candidates!) With hindsight the programme is very much the modern equivalent of "Carry On Constable", with a similar mix of visual/verbal/character-based humour; the inept Superintendent Bob is least successful for me, because I never did find incompetence entertaining, but on the other hand the clueless trainee Huggins who always takes everything literally is often very funny, so I'm not sure where the distinction is. I suspect it is that Huggins often manages to succeed unexpectedly, whereas Bob just fails...
Another 'season' (well, two episodes) of "Vienna Blood" appeared unexpectedly and I managed to catch it quite by coincidence; the BBC seems to keep it very quiet :(
Possibly due to actor availability they chose to cut this season to a single two-part story and have Max only peripherally involved in it (which does have the virtue of making it credible that they might decide to kill him off altogether, something that you can normally assume to be a red herring!) They have also definitely brought back the fiancée he originally dumps in the first series (in favour of one of his patients) because she is too 'safe', even after she is willing to endanger herself for him; obviously I am all in favour of this, but I do find myself wondering if it was because the actress for the 'replacement' character was not available for later programmes in the series...
What *didn't* work for me was tying the solution to the case in with the perpetrators of at least two (I lost track) assorted past cases, one of which I think might have been right back in the first or second series -- that sort of thing is all very well for dedicated fans who obsessively rewatch the boxed set, but for people who are watching these programmes live and at the time of first broadcast, having your entire solution hang on the identity of people who last appeared on screen literally years earlier just doesn't work :-(
I had almost no idea what was being referred to; if it was going to be important *in the context of this story*, then the details absolutely needed to be re-introduced, seemingly casually if necessary, at an earlier stage of the current season. It's one thing to bring back Rheinhart's love interest from the previous season (although I strongly dislike the tired old trope of 'married woman's husband turns out to be an abusive drunk' -- hallo, LND! -- thus justifying the lovers in taking up with one another again), and I did remember the explosive climax at the peace conference (which, ironically, *does* get properly re-introduced by having Rheinhart's superior maintain an obsessive clippings file on it). But having your major villains be connected to long-dead cases is just far too cleverly self-referential a piece of fan-service for its own good. You put in cunning little nods to past episodes that only True Fans will spot, but you don't hinge your entire denouement around that sort of thing...
And as I suspected they did try to pair off Pip and Ravi in the final reel, and as it turned out it didn't work for me at all. I don't know if the result was any less toe-curling in the original novel (or if it didn't take place at all in the original novel, and was just the producers trying to tie off loose ends!), but Pip simply does not come across as emotionally adult enough to start nursing a romantic interest in anyone, and the enormous height difference between the two characters doesn't help either. The dynamic between them is big brother/younger sister, which makes kissing both unconvincing and unattractive :-(
On the other hand "Piglets" was pretty successful despite my having missed most of the start, although if this week's episode was really the final one it seemed a bit inconclusive. (None of the plot strands were really cleared up except the one about who was going to be the new Chief Superintendent, which was neatly resolved by bringing the old one back over the head of both warring candidates!) With hindsight the programme is very much the modern equivalent of "Carry On Constable", with a similar mix of visual/verbal/character-based humour; the inept Superintendent Bob is least successful for me, because I never did find incompetence entertaining, but on the other hand the clueless trainee Huggins who always takes everything literally is often very funny, so I'm not sure where the distinction is. I suspect it is that Huggins often manages to succeed unexpectedly, whereas Bob just fails...
Another 'season' (well, two episodes) of "Vienna Blood" appeared unexpectedly and I managed to catch it quite by coincidence; the BBC seems to keep it very quiet :(
Possibly due to actor availability they chose to cut this season to a single two-part story and have Max only peripherally involved in it (which does have the virtue of making it credible that they might decide to kill him off altogether, something that you can normally assume to be a red herring!) They have also definitely brought back the fiancée he originally dumps in the first series (in favour of one of his patients) because she is too 'safe', even after she is willing to endanger herself for him; obviously I am all in favour of this, but I do find myself wondering if it was because the actress for the 'replacement' character was not available for later programmes in the series...
What *didn't* work for me was tying the solution to the case in with the perpetrators of at least two (I lost track) assorted past cases, one of which I think might have been right back in the first or second series -- that sort of thing is all very well for dedicated fans who obsessively rewatch the boxed set, but for people who are watching these programmes live and at the time of first broadcast, having your entire solution hang on the identity of people who last appeared on screen literally years earlier just doesn't work :-(
I had almost no idea what was being referred to; if it was going to be important *in the context of this story*, then the details absolutely needed to be re-introduced, seemingly casually if necessary, at an earlier stage of the current season. It's one thing to bring back Rheinhart's love interest from the previous season (although I strongly dislike the tired old trope of 'married woman's husband turns out to be an abusive drunk' -- hallo, LND! -- thus justifying the lovers in taking up with one another again), and I did remember the explosive climax at the peace conference (which, ironically, *does* get properly re-introduced by having Rheinhart's superior maintain an obsessive clippings file on it). But having your major villains be connected to long-dead cases is just far too cleverly self-referential a piece of fan-service for its own good. You put in cunning little nods to past episodes that only True Fans will spot, but you don't hinge your entire denouement around that sort of thing...